Whoops! Here it is well over a week since Intercon G, and I haven't written about it yet. Not only that, but I'm well overdue for a posting in general.

Those of you who went to Intercon, it was good to see you again. Those of you who didn't, why not?

Overall, I was a little too burned out going _into_ the con to get as much out of it as I usually do. It snuck up on me before I was prepared, and was over before I realized it. I felt like there were an awful lot of people I didn't get to see or talk to, a number of things I didn't get to, and that overall, I was just out of it.

Friday I got there early and helped do setup. Went to a late lunch and got back around 3, the perfect time to check into the room. I helped con suite get rolling, checked with Ops to see that they were settled, glanced over the registrar mailboxes and statistics one last time before the floodgates opened. Around this time the first notes of Out Of It were really getting loud. I missed the friday night parties, official and unofficial, and ended up going to bed around midnight.

This theme repeated itself over the weekend. The upshot is that I was able to get up and enjoy the use of the breakfast coupons saturday and sunday.

Saturday started out with me getting into the costume that had eaten so much time the month+ before the con. Admittedly, most of the assembly work was done by asdr83, but I still got to do tons of pattern hunting, fabric and accessory shopping, painting, cutting, pinning, trimming, measuring, ironing, and adorning. And button sewing. I'm proudest of the buttons because I found really spiffy ones online. I have tons of extras if you would like to obtain some yourself. Oh yeah, this was my Master Payne costume for Girl Genius. There are pictures around if you like. Then I went and had the buffet breakfast in costume. The game itself went pretty well. I was floored by how good the costumes were overall, and the numbers of people that had gone out of their way to costume extensively. The game focused around one large mechanic/plot that my character wasn't terribly even directly interested and involved in, but I got to hang around and talk to people, and do a little directing when people came up and asked what they should be doing, so that was appropriate for the character. There were some good scenes involving a flying machine, stolen artwork, and bribery, so I was happy. The hardest part was suppressing the knowledge from the comic that came after the games supposed storypoint. I could have used some of that knowledge to build connections to other characters/plots, but that would have been unfair to the game.

Midday was Intercon.gz, where I played in Paranormal Zero and The Westington Game. Paranormal Zero was a surprisingly satisfactory game for me, given the one hour nature. I like the Wild Cards style superheroes, and the whole game was centered around a moral dilemma which I _really_ enjoyed. I'd tell you more, but I don't want to ruin it. The Westington Game was also fun because of some of the very entertaining backstabbing, enthusiastic snarking, and deliciously malicious attitudes everyone took on. I figured out how myself and one other player could play a gambit to 'win' if no one caught on at the last minute (there was a deadline component to the game), and it worked out, so, go us! But again, the game was fun enough that even if we'd 'lost' it would have been a satisfying loss. I hope the other players had that level of fun too.

Saturday evening I helped GM the second run of Girl Genius. I was a bit surprised when I was asked to runtime GM a game that I would have no experience with until hours before the game, but it worked out pretty well. Talking with the other GMs on hand, we were able to reflect on some of the timing and handling issues of the first run, and managed to repace things to create more character interaction, and to keep things rolling along. My (biased) opinion is that the costumes were better in the first run, but that the tweaks may have made the second run the better game. Oh, except for one persons _amazing_ work constructing a marionette puppet Dingbot for the second run. Oh, and the JÃ¤gers. Both runs had exceptional JÃ¤gers, not only with costume, but with accent, attitude, action, and portrayal. Kudos, especially to the second trio, who were new larpers.

Saturday late night, I hung around a bit, chatted with some people, made a bunch of snow CONEs, but never really joined the dance party, and petered out before things really got going. I was kaput by 3am.

Sunday I got up early, got cleaned up and everything in the room squared away. Got things put in the car, then went and enjoyed brunch. It was good to sit with some other faces then, although, again, I was still having feelings of Out Of It, and not really connecting with the other attendees. After brunch, I got all the props for Prawn 3, and started putting together character bags. (Being in the hotel pool, each player got a plastic grocery bag just in case there was splashing) Bleemoo came by and we went down to the pool. Fewer people than I hoped made an appearance, but it was Sunday, and these things happen. There were some people signed up that I really thought would show, but didn't. We handed out as many characters as we could, and I got to hang out in the pool with the players (Bleemoo was swimtrunkless, if I may use such a term, and was thus the landlocked GM) while they also hung out and explored bits of plotsam and jetsam here and there. There was some confusion for players with the combat system, but given the low key nature of the environment, game, and players themselves, this was no big deal and we all had a good time.

I then helped Ops get cleaned up and cleared up while closing ceremonies were going on. I caught the latter half of the plugs, and then went back upstairs to help consuite get cleared out. I'm regularly one of the last stragglers, and usually make it to dead dog after everyone else has ordered food.

This year, I was so wiped and the choice of restaurants for the two dead dog groups I was aware of did not interest me, mostly because they were far away and/or a cuisine I was not in the mood for. So for the third day in a row I skipped the end of day socialness, and instead went home and collapsed. I think I'm just about recovered now.

Um, yeah - see, I should have listened to mswae and registered us way back when games were announced. 'Cause all of the other stuff for that weekend ended up falling through, and we *could* have done it. As it was, once the baby was born, we weren't about to commit to something like that.

Oh, and the Dingbot marionette was tempralisis - he's really very cool.

Thank you. I knew his (unusual) mundane name, but not his LJ. As far as babies go, it was a pretty baby heavy weekend. There were at least two other couples there with recent babies, and they were very well behaved (the babies, well, the couples too). I'm glad to see people are making ways for larping and family to work.